The Dazzling Set Designs for Kinky Boots

“What makes the factory look like Northampton is how worn it is,” explains AD100 architect and interior designer David Rockwell, who devised the sets for the new Broadway musical Kinky Boots, which takes place in working-class England. “I also think there’s something about the building’s height that tends to feel European. It really has an old-world grandeur.”

“I love the feeling of those factories—metal structures, exposed iron, tinted glass,” says Rockwell. The architect managed to infuse flexibility into the empty space of the cavernous factory floor by crafting an elevated rolling platform flanked by a pair of mobile staircases, which enables the stage to be transformed into multiple locations.

Rockwell creates an illusion even bigger than drag itself in morphing the dreary Price and Son workplace into Lola’s flashy nightclub. “We put lights into the rivets of the factory so the scene turns instantly. We wanted it to be a place in which Lola’s the biggest thing there. It’s not a huge drag club where she’s dwarfed—she’s the center of the action.”

Devising 15 locations from a single set proved challenging. Rockwell explains, however, “It gave us a chance to create surprises. Pieces of the factory come to life—things pivot and move. When we go to the Fisticuffs pub, our platform splits in two. We lower a sign and deploy the boxing ring’s ropes.”

Director-choreographer Jerry Mitchell went to Northampton and photographed a number of factories to to help guide the production’s appearance. Rockwell explains, “Those images informed the interior and the machinery, which looks like it’s actually used for the manufacturing of shoes. There’s one number where the characters put together a pair of boots. The conveyor is used in a dance number, and the shoe pallets are used as scenery.”

“We looked at a lot of runway shows,” Rockwell says of his inspiration for the final scene at the Milan Shoe Fair. “We wanted to make a high-fashion fun house that would stand in contrast to the Price and Sons factory.” The designer employed more than 1,500 lights, a series of mirrors, and backlit panels depicting oversize shoes. “We wanted to create an infinite reflection, so we included benches on either side filled with actors playing the fashionistas and used fragmented mirrors to augment the effect. It’s unlikely that a shoe fashion show would have that budget, but at that point we thought, what the hell?”